The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People

Image by Shepherd Chabata from Pixabay

I have been pondering this week how I might be addicted to getting emotionally unavailable people to open up, and the ways in which it limits my growth and potential. I love deep connections and, whether it is getting someone who is naturally shy or someone who is frankly just outright out of touch with their emotions, I have pursued connection with many emotionally unavailable people as if it’s the Holy Grail.

It’s like there’s an inherent hunger and life keeps presenting new ways to satisfy it.

Terri Cole talks about a common trauma pattern she sees in clients, popularly termed in psychotherapy circles as the mother wound and the father wound.

She says “While they have some similarities, mother wounds tend to cause over-giving, enabling, and taking on the role of the fixer or rescuer. Whereas those who struggle with father wounds tend to feel unlovable, unwanted, not enough, and constantly try to prove they are worthy of love by doing, instead of just by being”.

We all have our own stories and these types of behaviours and feelings seem to be prevalent in our society, perpetuated through generations. But I can certainly see in my own early life the people and occasions where I would have liked to have felt more seen and had my emotions validated.

The thought has occurred to me that the reason life keeps presenting me with the same challenges isn’t likely to be about going around the same old loop trying to get a different outcome. It’s far more likely it’s  giving me an opportunity to change the way I react and look at what is happening inside me instead.

I was reading this from Teal Swan last week, which is quite a simple and healthy way to think about things:

“As a species, people are in the process of progressing towards the actualization of the awareness that in a relationship, there is a “you” and there is a “me”. Whereas people tend to think that in any moment, it is either “you” or “me”.

To have a “me” is to have awareness of your own personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, your personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

To have a “you” is to have awareness of the other being’s personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, their personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

When you have committed to conscious living and to awakening, both must matter to you, regardless of whether they matter to the other person.

But for a relationship to be a truly mutually beneficial one, both must matter to you and to the other person as well. If both the “me” and the “you” matter to both people in a relationship, the door is open to identify what the highest and best option for both parties is.”

For me it’s been a journey going from foregoing the “me” in order to please “you” to a more healthy state of “me” and “you”.

That has required some deep work over a number of years learning about what my own needs are and, as Teal says, also what my own feelings, thoughts, integrity, desires, and therefore my own personal best interests and personal truth look like. And to care about it enough to take different action, which has involved learning how to have and hold healthy boundaries.

Someone I’ve known and loved for many years – who is not able to express his emotions well – said to me this week (when I called him out on a hurtful comment) that I over analyse. I find this is a frequent catch cry of people who cannot express their emotions well.

It used to send me into a spiral of self loathing and I’d feel like there was something wrong with me. In fact, as I shared this with him, I also said “I won’t pretend I’m not staring down the barrel of that right now, but I’ve learned I’m actually okay, pretty healthy in fact”.

Sure, I analyze, I’m a born psychologist, it’s what I naturally do. But I also learn and grow, and now I see the growth opportunity in these types of interaction.

There is no sense trying to get water from a well that has long since dried up and is not interested in replenishing itself, that is for sure. No matter how much I want people to feel safe enough to express their emotions with me, it’s not a given.

My friend and I were talking about different types of emotional unavailability. As a trauma therapist this is her take:

• There are some people who look inside and it’s a blank. Sometimes that’s because they were stunted as children and were not allowed to have an emotion let alone express it. Also, sometimes it’s due to their neuropathy as some people are so pragmatic that emotions seem a waste of energy and they bubble up rarely.
• Then there are those who don’t feel safe to express or can’t fathom the words to express how they feel, or they can sift and sort into categories and therefore it all comes out as whatever default they have in place.
• Then there are the narcissists of the world who have found their winning way is one of making other people responsible for how they feel, and have also found that other people are convenient dumping grounds for their toxic projections, pain and handy reactions that feed whatever size their narcissistic appetite.
• Also, there are people who are aware of what they feel, and can fathom the words, and do feel safe but simply just don’t want to tell another person their feelings because they just don’t want them to know (clue – these are the healthy ones).

This week I was also accused of something I would never dream of doing. It was, of course, a misunderstanding. But it is also part of a pattern, a very toxic and unhealthy pattern in this particular relationship, where it seems to me that the thoughts that are formed are really a projection of that person’s worst fears.

The catalyst this time appears to be a mix up in dates, dates that were communicated weeks prior in writing and also discussed verbally. However, this person believed that I had gone back on my word and – despite sharing the previous email with it all laid out in black and white – was still of the opinion that I “make everything hard for them”.

When I say catalyst, the true catalyst I am sure does not even exist in anything real between us, for time and again we have done this merry dance. I suspect it is likely a manifestation and projection of their own unresolved wounds. Therefore, it is not my stuff to solve.

However, because I have to have an ongoing relationship with this person I have to mitigate repercussions by holding very healthy boundaries and ensuring that communication – when it needs to occur – is as clear as possible and in written form.

It is interesting how life keeps presenting these opportunities for me to really bed-in my learning. In another conversation this week where I was being pushed towards a formal agreement I’d been waiting for some time to discuss, and is very important to me, I felt quite proud of myself as I held a firm boundary with someone for whom this was more of a tick box exercise:

“There has been zero discussion about this and now, within a 24 period, I'm supposed to sign off on how we manage this important aspect of my life going forward without the other person – again – not having supplied the information I requested five months ago (and want) in order to make my decision. No, sorry, I have kids still up and wide awake needing my attention and have no space to even think about this right now, so I'm not rushing in and making a snap decision tonight”.

And so life goes on, and as it does I expect I will become less and less attracted to those who are unable to express themselves emotionally, and, now that I am on the right track, it will certainly bother me less when it does happen.

What about you, are you subconsciously attracting do-over’s into your life and going around the same old tracks causing you hurt and pain? Is it time to take a different perspective and start holding healthier boundaries in order to attract those out there who are able to hold a space for both the “me” and the “you” in our relationships?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within and Use the Contrast and Challenges in Your Life for Your Growth and Expansion . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.